Microsoft’s Q4 earnings beat Street with $22.6B in revenue

Dear All,

Wall Street expected the company to report earnings per share of $0.58 on revenue of $22.14 billion.

The company’s stock was trading up 3.5 percent right after the earnings were announced.

As Microsoft’s director of investor relations Zack Moxcey told me after the earnings announcement, the GAAP results this quarter still reflect the charges Microsoft took related to its phone business and adjustments for Windows 10 revenue deferrals. He also attributed part of Microsoft’s higher than expected earnings to the company’s lower than expected tax rate.

In the year-ago-quarter, Microsoft’s revenue was $22.2 billion, but earnings per share came to a $0.40 loss because of the $7.5 billion charge Microsoft took related to its acquisition of Nokia. Without the charge, the company’s earnings per share would have been $0.62.

“This past year was pivotal in both our own transformation and in partnering with our customers who are navigating their own digital transformations,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “The Microsoft Cloud is seeing significant customer momentum and we’re well positioned to reach new opportunities in the year ahead.”

Like in previous quarters, analysts will be especially interested in Microsoft’s cloud revenue. In its Q3 report, Microsoft said revenue from its “Intelligent Cloud” business had grown to $6.1 billion, up 3 percent (or 8 percent in constant currency). Azure revenue had grown 120 percent year-over-year while its server products and cloud services revenue had increased 5 percent.

This quarter, Intelligent Cloud revenue hit $6.7 billion and Azure revenue grew 102 percent year-over-year.

 

Microsoft has long said that it expects its commercial cloud business to hit a $20 billion run rate by 2018. In Q3, it reported that its run rate was $9.4 billion. With this new report, that number has now hit $12.1 billion, which Microsoft prominently highlighted in its earnings release. Moxcey told me that the company is standing by its plan to reach a $20 billion run rate by 2018.

Sadly, Microsoft doesn’t provide geographic breakdowns of its revenue numbers, but Moxcey attributed some of the growth in the company’s Azure business to Microsoft’s wide geographic footprint with regard to Azure regions.

As far as Intelligent Cloud goes, Moxcey also noted that the company doubled its customer base for its enterprise mobility solutions year-over-year (it now has 33,000 customers), and that the installed base grew nearly 2.5x year-over-year.

Here is a breakdown of Microsoft’s numbers for its other business units:

Productivity and Business Processes (this includes Office, consumer Office and Dynamic, among other products): $7.0 billion, compared to $6.3 billion in revenue in the last quarter. Microsoft attributes this to strong growth across its productivity services and especially the fact that Office 365 commercial revenue grew 54 percent year-over-year and that its Dynamics CRM paid seats are growing at more than 2.5x year-over-year.

More Personal Computing (including Windows, Devices, Gaming and Search): $8.9 billion in revenue, compared to $12.7 billion in the last quarter. Phone revenue, unsurprisingly, declined 71 percent, but the company’s revenue from its Surface line continues to increase and was up 9 percent in the last quarter (mostly driven by the Surface 4 and Surface Book).

Windows OEM consumer revenue grew 27 percent. For the commercial market, it grew 2 percent (which sounds low, but is far better than in previous quarters). Because Microsoft’s revenue in this area is largely driven by new purchases, Microsoft doesn’t expect the end of the free update offer to have a markable influence on next quarter’s results.

Microsoft also announced that Xbox Live now has 49 million monthly active users and that its search advertising revenue was up 16 percent, largely due to the deeper integration of its search tools into Windows 10. During today’s earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also noted that Windows 10 users have now asked Cortana 8 billion questions to date.

For the full year, Microsoft reported $92 billion in non-GAAP revenue and $2.10 in adjusted earnings per share. The company’s operating income was $27.9 billion on a non-GAAP basis.

source

Hacked Server Marketplace Returns as a Tor Domain

Dear ALL,

xDedic, a marketplace selling access to hacked servers, has reemerged as a Tor domain after a report that exposed its illicit activity sparked its operators to take it down last month.

After Kaspersky Lab researchers revealed in mid june that they counted over 70,000 hacked servers made available for purchase on xDedic, some for as low as just $6, the marketplace operators closed the virtual shop on June 16. However, with roughly 30,000 users a month, the storefront was too popular to disappear for good, and intelligence firm Digital Shadows saw it re-emerge only a week later, but as a Tor domain now.

In an incident report shared with SecurityWeek, Digital Shadows reveals that a user named xDedic posted on 24 Jun 2016 a link to the new site on the criminal forum exploit[.]in. The user, who “had an established reputation on the forum and has been previously identified as associated with the site,” posted the link on a Russian language forum thread titled “xDedic спалили” (xDedic burned).

The original xDedic site was established in November 2014, and provided detailed information on each of the servers available for purchase on it: price, location, speed, anti-virus installed, and more. Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered 70,000 servers available on the marketplace, but later revealed that these might have been only the items that were the least attractive to buyers.

Several days after the initial report was published, the researchers received information that over 176,000 unique hacked servers were traded on xDedic between October 2014 and February 2016 and that many more might have been traded since February. The hacked servers were located in 173 countries and came from 416 unique sellers. The prices for these servers ranged from $6 to $6,000, though only around 50 servers cost more than $50.

The new xDedic site is identical in design to the previous one, but Digital Shadows researchers say that the marketplace’s operators didn’t import the user accounts from the initial website, meaning that accounts could be freely registered. However, they also discovered that a $50 credit was required after registration for an account to be activated.

Awareness on the new site is low at the moment, but researchers believe that this will change shortly, since the previous site was attracting 30,000 users a month when it closed down. It appears that the new xDedic domain was shared only on said criminal forum and on a French language dark web criminal site, but “with the exception of Tor domain aggregation lists could not be located elsewhere.”

Researchers couldn’t confirm how many users the new site has attracted for the time being, as the domain is hosted on the Tor network and they can’t assess the site's traffic volumes. However, the research into the new xDedic site is still undergoing, Digital Shadows told SecurityWeek.

“The nature of the dark web is naturally very volatile, so keeping a keen awareness of this naturally changing landscape is key for organizations,” said James Chappell, CTO and co-founder of Digital Shadows.

Kaspersky Lab researchers also are monitoring the situation. “We are aware of reports of the return of xDedic and are monitoring the situation. We have a policy to share the findings of cybercriminal research with the relevant law enforcement agencies, and we have already done so in the case of xDedic,” Kaspersky Lab told SecurityWeek via email.

Article source

Upgrade to Windows 10 before July 29

Dear all,
You all know that Microsoft had released Windows 10 and you may be wondering to Upgrade to windows 10 or continue with windows 8.1 or windows 7.
So I thought of giving you some points to considering upgrading your windows to windows 10.

. It’s free

Until July 29th, 2016, you are able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, if your PC hasn’t already done so by itself. That’s a saving of up to £189.99. The Home version of the system costs £99.99 and is enough for most users, however, IT pros and Developers may need the professional version. But why upgrade? Keep reading, as there are many other benefits to upgrading to Windows 10.

2. Live Tiles

At first, they may seem confusing and hard to use, but in reality, you just need to give it five minutes and it feels like second nature. Live tiles are one of the best features the Windows platform has to offer. They show you information even before opening the app. All you need to do is open your Start Menu then glance at the start screen. You already know who commented on your Facebook post, who liked your tweet, who sent you a mail and what that mail is about. The possibilities are endless, and this is something everybody should take a look at in order to be more productive. When you go live tiles, you can’t go back.

3. Automatic Updates

With all the memes about Windows 10’s aggressive update policy floating around the internet, updating may seem like a bad thing, however, this isn’t entirely true because updates provide extra security, performance improvements, bug fixes, and from time to time, even new features. This doesn’t seem all that bad, does it? With Windows 10, Microsoft is changing how they update your system. It does it automatically, both for apps and for the system itself. When a new update is released, your PC downloads it in the background and prompts you to update when you turn it off, at the time you wouldn’t use it anyway. This makes your PC secure and up to date, without you having to do anything.

4. Action Center

With Windows 10, you get the Action Center. If you have a smartphone, which you probably do, this works just like the page you get when you swipe down from the top on your phone. It keeps you up-to-date with information and notifies you about anything that needs your attention. You can reply directly from there, without even opening the app, as part of Actionable Notifications. You also have your Quick Actions that are used to enable or disable different settings of the system, like Bluetooth, WiFi, change brightness, Tablet Mode and more.

5. Tablet Mode

The Tablet Mode is a truly great feature. It optimizes the whole system for touch and pen input. Apps go full screen, split-view changes its behaviour, buttons get bigger, gestures turn themselves on… There is a lot more to that, but writing everything down would require its own article. The feature is something especially useful for 2-in-1 devices like Microsoft’s Surface. Tablet mode turns on automatically when you disconnect the keyboard and turns off when you reconnect it. This helps to keep you productive by seamlessly adjusting your experience to the most appropriate layout.

6. The design

The design language that Windows 10 uses is MDL2, which stands for Microsoft Design Language 2. Windows 10 is often criticised for its inconsistency and unbalanced design, however, this is getting better and better, and Windows 10 is shaping up to be a truly beautiful system. With the Anniversary Update, you’ll also be able to use the built-in dark theme, that is praised among Windows Phone fans that had access to different theme choices since 2010. Many professionals and regular consumers often want their PCs to look elegant and sleek, and that is now possible thanks to Windows 10’s modern and elegant look.

7. It’s part of a whole new platform

Windows 10 is not just a Windows 7 or 8 update. It is a whole new platform. The platform is called the Universal Windows Platform that is shortened to UWP. The platform includes the HoloLens, Tablet, PC, Laptop, Phone, IoT and more It is supposed to be one operating system for all your needs. Take Candy Crush Saga for example. It runs on Microsoft HoloLens, Mobile, PC and Surface Hub. It is the exact same app on all devices, and it scales perfectly. The same goes for Readit and many more apps. Develop once, run everywhere.

8. The Speed

Windows 10 is the most optimized Windows yet. It boots up instantly, opens apps quickly, and browses the web smoothly. It even handles tasks at heavy load better, because of new technologies Microsoft implemented into Windows 10, designed to bring your PCs performance to unfound heights.

9. Cortana

Cortana is a personal assistant, similar to Apple’s Siri. She is supposed to help in managing day-to-day tasks, remember things, find things and more. If you are in one of the supported countries, Cortana will sit on your taskbar, in Edge and appear in several other places, ready to lend a helping hand. She can easily be invoked by simply saying “Hey Cortana”, then commanded by telling her what you want. If you’re using Microsoft’s new Edge browser, she will sometimes give you coupons and codes for shopping websites, take care of flight tickets, find more information on objects and do so much more.

Windows 10 is getting better and better with every update released, and not upgrading to it while you have a chance to do so for free would be a bad idea. These are just some of the reasons for upgrading that we’ve collated, but there are so many more to discover – and with this being a continuously upgraded operating system, it would only improve further. For those who don’t upgrade while it is free, they may regret it at a later point, when their current system becomes archaic.

So I hope you will take a right decision after reading all these reasons..
THE SOURCE